It is the elemental nature of politics that Chris Christie was describing when, in a press conference Thursday (which just happened to fall on Nixon’s 101st birthday) the governor of New Jersey defended his somewhat pugnacious operating style by citing the Chicago axiom: “Politics ain’t beanbag.”

Put aside, for a moment, the question of whether blocking access to the George Washington Bridge to spread misery in an enemy’s constituency was a) dumb or b) gratuitous or c) legal, there is a case to be made for actions that inspire fear in politics. The art of politics is the governing of passions. And sometimes the governing of passions requires a kick in the ass.

Too cynical? Too flip? Too … Nixonian?

Trundle down to your basement, where you keep the books from college that they made you buy for PolSci101; maybe you read them, maybe you didn’t. Open The Prince to Chapter XVII, where the great Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli took up the question of whether it’s better to be loved or feared. “It may be answered that one should wish to be both,” he wrote, “but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

History tells us that this Machiavelli fellow was on to something. It’s been 500 years since he wrote The Prince, and we still employ him as an adjective for clever machination. But since Nixon crashed and burned 40 years ago, the creative use of fear and fury has fallen on hard times. Watergate gave muscle a bad name.

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Oh, sure, from time to time some presidential aide will blow the cover of a willowy blonde CIA agent because her husband wrote an offending op-ed. The White House will find itself encircled by a snarling pack of partisans, sententious scribes and zealous prosecutors, all claiming to be defending the purity of our politics. If it ends well, the abandoned subaltern will only wind up fined, disbarred and the heavy in a Hollywood script—not behind bars.

But mostly, these days, fear plays an important role in special interest pleadings, where private individuals and groups are routinely granted license that elected leaders are denied. The prospect of having the Club for Growth or some kindred entity dump shadowy millions into a challenger’s war chest does surely motivate the members of Congress. It is a bizarre morality that sanctions the use of political blackmail by anonymous billionaires and secretive corporations, but comes down like hell’s own fire on an elected leader who dangles, or rescinds, a political favor to induce cooperation.

It wasn’t always so. Back-scratching, log-rolling and arm-twisting once greased the legislative process. Back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a young Democratic lawyer named James Eastland won a seat in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi by running against the liberal New Deal. When he arrived in Washington, Eastland would later recall, he was ushered to the White House.

“Son, you think you played hell with me down there in that primary, don’t you?” the president demanded.

“No, sir, Mr. President, not really,” Eastland stammered. Roosevelt gave him the facts of life.

“We’re both good Democrats. If you want something for your state from me, come in that door over there and I’ll give you two minutes to tell me what you want and I’ll see that you get it,” said the president. “But then I’m going to spend 15 minutes telling you what I want from you and you are going to do it. Understood?”

Eastland understood. They got along just fine.

American political history is full of broken legs and bloodied noses—as well as payback, bugging, blackmail, break-ins and other dirty tricks.

The founding fathers, almost immediately, split into two factions and scrapped like wolverines over the direction of their new republic. The epitomic moment occurred when future president James Monroe (allied with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) blackmailed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (a leader of the rival Federalist faction and a preeminent member of Washington’s cabinet) with proof of Hamilton’s adultery. It might have cost Hamilton the presidency.

John Aloysius Farrell is the author of prize-winning biographies of House Speaker Tip O’Neill and the great American defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow. He’s at work now on an upcoming biography of Richard Nixon.